Interactions between Insurance and Tort Theories in the Norwegian Law of Personal Injuries

Abstract

Before industrialization, liability for personal injury and death was probably more a question of criminal law and repression than one of economic compensation. The introduction of the machine and the factory gave rise to a number of injuries-up till then unknown except in times of war-leaving an increasing number of people widowed, orphaned, or crippled. And as soon as a workable method of securing a fair compensation to the victims of industrial accidents had been invented and established-through industrial injuries insurance-traffic accidents began creating new problems for the legislators and engineers of social security. There have of course always been cripples, widows, and orphans, and the obligation to care for them has to a varying degree been acknowledged by the family, the local community, and the state. In regard to industrial accidents and traffic accidents, however, there were special incentives to deal with their economic problems in a rational manner. In both of these classes the cause of the victims' need was a sort of activity that might, in one way or another, be made economically responsible. In the case of industrial injuries, the new instrument of accident insurance afforded the necessary tool, while for traffic accidents the law mainly resorted to the traditional concepts of tortious liability, often combined with a compulsory liability insurance or other kind of security. Even today industrial accidents and accidents on the roads are the two chief sources of sudden, violent personal injury and death, calling for reparation. To them may be added war, whose human bill of misery must be settled through other channels, and which will not be dealt with here. The aim of this paper is, firstly, to record and describe the legal solutions chosen by the Norwegian legislators in order to establish an adequate loss cover for the victims of industrial and traffic accidents, and, secondly, to broach some of the problems that arise when traditional concepts, inherited from the law of tort compensation, are to be adjusted to these two systems. One aspect of this is how the compensation systems, as well as the law of tort, fit into the general pattern of economic security in a modern welfare state.